02:42
Hundreds of artifacts, which were recently unearthed in the village of Jiaojia in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province, are now on display at the National Museum of China in Beijing. Among those are items from a five-thousand-year-old graveyard of GIANTS, whom experts say, would have been unusually TALL and STRONG.
Over 230 relics unearthed at Jiaojia are on display at the National Museum of China, from colorful potteries and jade wares. The ruin site was believed to be the political, economic and cultural center of Shandong 5,000 years ago. Since 2016, archeologists have been excavating the ruins of 116 houses and 215 graves.
WANG FEN HEAD OF THE JIAOJIA EXCAVATION TEAM "Most of the unearthed items are potteries and jade wares. They aren't precious when compared with other great archaeological finds. They were just some household articles, but the study of their history is still meaningful. We get to understand how people 5,000 years ago lived, what they wore and what kind of tools they were using."
Skeletons of 5,000-year-old Chinese "giants" discovered at the ruins are also on display. The measurements of bones indicate the height of at least one man to have reached 1.9 meters with quite a few at 1.8 meters or taller, which experts say is incredible.
WANG YUEQIAN CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION "It is incredible. Locals in Shandong see their height as a defining characteristic. A study conducted in 2015 found the average height of men in Shangdong was 1.753 meters. But the skeletons discovered at the graveyard indicated the man would have reached 1.9 meters, which is quite rare in the archaeological history of China."
The curator also says further study and excavation of the site is of great value to the understanding of the origin of culture in east China.
Primary study indicates the relics are from the Longshan Culture, a late Neolithic civilization in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River thousands of years ago, named after Mount Longshan in Zhangqiu.